Poisoned Ground: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 3) (25 page)

‘Lee, do you know where Amma is?’

‘No.’ As far as Lee had known, Mumtaz had been at home, packing.

‘Only, it’s late,’ Shazia said.

‘Is her car there?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Do you know if your mum went off anywhere?’

‘I know she went to the hospital, but that was this morning.’ She paused for a moment and then she said, ‘There’s a man outside the house.’

Lee was liking this less and less. ‘What kind of man?’

‘Young, Asian. I’ve seen him before,’ Shazia said. ‘I saw him talking to Amma once. She didn’t look happy. He creeps me out.’

‘Did you ask your mum who he was?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Lee, can you come, please? I’m scared.’

Lee put all the correspondence from Derek Salmon into his desk drawer and locked it. ‘On my way,’ he said.

‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t open the door to anyone but me, all right, darlin’?’

‘Yes.’

Lee slipped his phone into his pocket and put his coat on. He made one more call to Cobbett on the landline but he was still
otherwise engaged. Then he left. Del Salmon’s letterheads would have to wait.

*

Rashida had just zipped up her bag when Zizi came into the living room.

‘What do you want? Get back to bed,’ she said.

‘Where are you going?’ the little girl asked.

Rashida felt her face get hot. ‘Nowhere.’

‘Then why’ve you got that big bag?’

It was in full view and it was stuffed to bursting. Rashida sat down on the sofa. ‘Come here,’ she said to her little sister.

Zizi almost tripped over her nightie as she ran across the room but Rashida caught her. She sat her down on her knee.

‘Where are you going?’ Zizi reiterated.

She was a bright kid who knew a lot more about the world than anyone, with the exception of Rashida, gave her credit for. Rashida could lie to her brothers, but not her sister.

‘I have to go away, Zizi,’ she said. ‘Mum wants me to marry Cousin Anwar and I just can’t.’

‘Does Baba want you to get married too?’

Apparently he did, although Rashida couldn’t bring herself to believe it. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But I can’t marry Anwar. He’s horrible.’

‘He fights people at football matches,’ her sister said. ‘And he smells.’

He did. Although her mother hadn’t recognized Anwar’s smell, Rashida had. Whenever he wasn’t fighting he was smoking cannabis. When he fought he took cocaine.

Rashida stroked her sister’s hair. ‘I can’t marry him, Zizi,’ she said.

Zizi shook her head. ‘I don’t want to get married. There’s a lot of washing and cooking. It’s boring.’

‘So I have to go.’

Upstairs their two brothers fought and laughed.

‘Where?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ Rashida said. ‘And you mustn’t tell Omy or the boys. You have to promise me that.’

‘Will you go to MJ’s?’

MJ had to be her first port of call, there was nowhere else she could go. But she said, ‘No.’

‘So where will you go?’

‘I don’t know yet. But if I don’t get out now I may never be able to go,’ Rashida said. ‘You do understand that, don’t you, Zizi?’

She nodded her head. But Rashida saw that her sister’s eyes were wet. Zizi was a tough kid who could easily hold her own with her brothers, but, like Rashida, she found their mother difficult. She put her arms around Rashida’s neck. ‘I don’t want you to go.’

‘And I don’t want to leave you, but I have to.’ She put Zizi on the sofa beside her and stood up. ‘I’m sorry.’

The little girl cried. Rashida felt her heart break. But if she didn’t leave soon her mother would come back and then she’d be trapped. ‘Zizi, I have to go.’

‘But I’ll never see you again!’

‘You will. You will. I promise.’

‘But how?’

It was a good question, which Rashida couldn’t answer.

Upstairs it sounded as if the boys were trying to break the walls down. They were such a pair of little thugs.

Then Zizi said something that had never occurred to Rashida. ‘What if Omy makes me marry Cousin Anwar?’

Rashida looked into her sister’s seven-year-old eyes and became very still. She hadn’t thought of that. If her mother had promised a bride to Cousin Anwar and she didn’t deliver one, then it would bring shame on Salwa and on Hatem. And although her sister was too young to marry just at that moment – she hadn’t even been cut yet – she could be that pig’s wife in less than a year. They would cut her almost immediately. Called a ‘circumcision’ or ‘operation’, Rashida still remembered hers with horror. Her own grandmother had laid across her body as some witch-like old woman from Aswan had stuck a knife into her private parts and cut them away. For years she’d tried to put it from her mind but if her sister was at risk she couldn’t.

She had no idea how long her mother was going to be out and so Rashida had to act fast. ‘Go and get your shoes and your coat on,’ she said to Zizi.

She wiped away a tear. ‘Am I going with you?’

‘Yes,’ Rashida said.

Zizi jumped down off the sofa and began to run towards the door. ‘I’ll go and get Barbie and Spongebob.’

Rashida grabbed her. ‘No!’

‘No!’ The little girl’s face crumbled.

Rashida pulled her back. ‘No toys,’ she said. ‘If you go upstairs the boys will hear you. I’m sorry but if we’re going, we just have to go. There’s no time.’

For a moment she wondered whether Zizi would leave without her favourite toys but then she said, ‘All right. But will you buy me another Barbie and Spongebob, Rashida?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Now come on, let’s go.’

The girls’ brothers were still fighting upstairs when they let themselves out of the house. Once in the cold, wintry street Zizi said, ‘So where are we going then?’

Rashida put her bag on her back and picked her sister up. She said, ‘To a crazy place. But it’ll be fun.’

Zizi laughed. ‘I hope it’s with MJ,’ she said. ‘I like her.’

*

It was totally black. Her head didn’t just hurt, it shrieked. The darkness combined with the pain was like being inside her own headache. Mumtaz wanted to massage her temples but she couldn’t move her arms. Somehow she was confined. And there was that smell too, blood and – distinct now she really got her nose around it – faeces.

Slowly she sifted through events in her mind to try to make sense of what had happened. She’d been in el Masri’s office and she’d opened a cupboard. There had been blood and, although she hadn’t seen a dead body, she had feared that one had to be close. She still had that feeling. Was she in that cupboard? She couldn’t see anything and, because she was unable to move her arms, she couldn’t check out where she might be by touch. And there was no sound.

Mumtaz tried to move her legs but they too were restrained. She had a notion that they were in a bag of some sort. There was a feeling of coarse material against her legs, which she tried to kick off until she realized that her ankles were tied together. She had an urge to scream but knew she couldn’t. Someone had tied her up and put her in this darkness, which meant that they didn’t have her best interests at heart. Screaming could provoke them. But at the same time, she couldn’t just lie where she was and wait for death or whatever else whoever had hit her had in mind. She tried to move onto her side. Trussed up, she felt like a beetle on its back. Then her heart began to pump. Adrenaline
overload was great if it allowed her to get the strength she needed to free herself, but Mumtaz knew that was unlikely.

And then, suddenly, the floor beneath her dropped. Twice. Her prison fell and fell again. Not far, just centimetres. Mumtaz’s breathing became almost non-existent and her head felt as if it was made of wool. Something underneath her body began to vibrate. With no visual cues to help her, Mumtaz had no idea what was going on. But then her prison began to move and she almost laughed. Could it be that she was in that crime film cliché, the boot of a car?

*

‘He went,’ Shazia said.

‘When?’

‘About ten minutes ago. But he was really out there, Lee, I’m not making it up.’

‘I know you’re not, love,’ Lee said. Mumtaz owed money to people she wouldn’t name. But if those people were staking out the house he’d have to get Mumtaz to talk. Shazia was trembling with fear. That was unacceptable.

‘You’ve tried your mum’s mobile?’

‘Just goes to voicemail,’ Shazia said. ‘Have you tried?’

‘Yeah. Same.’

‘So what do we do?’ She sat down on a beanbag that was squashed between two piles of cardboard boxes. She looked shattered and defeated. ‘Why does Amma just go off and do things without telling anyone, Lee? Why?’

Mumtaz Hakim had really taken to private investigation work. Lee had hired her initially on the strength of her psychology degree. He’d thought, correctly, it pointed at an enquiring mind.
He had underestimated how enquiring and hadn’t bargained for quite such an independent nature. She was almost his twin when it came to going off alone to pursue her own agenda.

‘So the last place you know she went …?’

‘That hospital.’

‘Ilford.’

‘I guess.’

‘So let’s ring them and see if she’s there.’ Lee looked around for somewhere to sit but then gave up.

Shazia said, ‘Do you want the beanbag?’

‘No.’ He Googled Ilford Hospital and phoned reception but he just got an answerphone message. ‘I’m gonna have to go over there,’ he said.

Shazia stood. ‘I’ll get my coat,’ she said.

‘No, Shaz …’

‘Don’t even go there, Lee!’ She held up a slim, manicured hand. ‘This time I’m coming with you.’

The last time Mumtaz had gone missing, she had been held hostage by the husband of a client. Shazia, along with Mumtaz’s parents, had had to watch the progress of the siege on television.

‘And anyway, you can’t leave me here in case that man comes back again,’ she said.

Young and Asian was how she had described him. Lee knew that Mumtaz owed money to her late husband’s creditors, who were likely to be Asian. He’d wondered for a long time which particular gang she was in hock to. He knew a few and they knew him.

‘Well, come on!’ Shazia had her coat on and was wearing a pair of massive, platform-soled Goth boots.

Lee looked at her and shook his head.

‘What?’ she said.

‘The boots …’

‘Oh, God, you sound like Amma. The boots are fine, come on, let’s go.’

She walked towards the front door. Lee, head down, feet weary, followed her like a besotted father who’d been nagged, against his will, into taking his child to a dodgy nightclub.

There’d been an article in the local paper about these flats even before they’d been built. People had been worried the ground they were going to be built on was poisoned. Salwa hadn’t understood, but Hatem had told her it was because there used to be a gasworks and a chemical factory nearby. Then a woman at the mosque, a white convert, had told her about the estate she lived on, which was just to the north of the flats, at Beckton.

The woman had said, ‘We used to find all sorts in our back yard when we first moved into our place. Bits of metal and stuff my husband said was poison. Sometimes the rotary dryer for the washing would sink into the grass, the ground was so bad.’

Salwa walked up to the front entrance and then looked at the address she’d written down on her hand. It was amazing what the imam’s son could find out about people on Facebook. She pressed a buzzer at the top of the display and waited for someone to answer. She had her story all ready in her best English. But no one responded. She pressed the buzzer again.

It was cold and Salwa wanted to go home. But she couldn’t. She’d come to confront el Masri. He had explosives in this flat of his. She knew it. When he let her in, she would find them, even if she had to kill him to do it. She’d sharpened the paring knife from the kitchen. If he gave her any problems, she’d stick it in
him. Getting in was the difficult part. She had a story prepared about being from a charity that collected for poor people at Christmastime. El Masri had told Hatem many times how he always wanted to help the poor. And he was a Christian. But he wasn’t answering his door. She looked up at the building and wondered whether he could see her from wherever he was. Reluctantly, she uncovered her head. Then her phone rang.

‘Omy?’ It was the younger of the two boys, Gamal. Her favourite.

‘Yes, my soul. What is it?’

‘Rashida and Zizi have gone,’ he said.

For a moment she didn’t understand him. She made him repeat what he’d said in Arabic. Then she understood.

‘Gone? Gone where? To the shops? What?’ she said. ‘When?’

‘We don’t know,’ Gamal said.

‘Is Asim there?’

‘Yes, Omy.’

Gamal put his older brother on the phone.

‘Do you know where your sisters have gone and why?’ Salwa asked.

‘No.’

Salwa’s hand shook. ‘Why not?’ she shrieked. ‘What were you doing that you didn’t see them go?’

‘Omy …’

Her face was hot. She threw her headscarf on the ground. It was just getting in her way. ‘I’m coming home,’ she said. ‘Stay where you are. Don’t move.’

She’d walked from Beckton bus station, which had been a long way. She started to run back, even though she knew that she couldn’t do it for long. What was Rashida doing? The girl wouldn’t have just gone to the shops and, if she had, she wouldn’t
have taken her sister with her. Had Rashida found out about the Cairo tickets? Her heart went mad. What if the girls had gone to Social Services? What if Rashida told them everything? What if they found out she’d been cut? Nobody did that in Britain and so they didn’t understand. They thought it was wrong. Illegal.

It began to rain. As her clothes got wet, Salwa felt herself being pulled down towards the poisoned ground. If Rashida had gone for good then everything was going to unravel. Salwa began to cry.

*

She’d been travelling for ten or maybe fifteen minutes when the vehicle stopped. She heard voices but she couldn’t make out any words. Again, it moved down, which had to mean that someone else had got in. Then they were off again. Going round corners was frightening. Roundabouts were even worse. Mumtaz didn’t have anything she could hang on to and so her body was just thrown about like a doll.

She wasn’t alone in that boot either. When the car turned there was a clanking noise like the sound of tools smashing against each other in a bag. And there was something else. Large and heavy, it pressed against her legs when the car changed direction and she feared it was whatever or whoever she hadn’t managed to see in Dr el Masri’s cupboard. How could she have been so foolish as to go to that office on her own after dark?

Hadn’t Lee said that she had to keep him in the loop? And what would Shazia do if she died in this car boot or was shot in some country lane miles outside London? If she’d been working solely in her clients’ interests, Mumtaz could justify it. But she hadn’t been. What she’d done had been more about Sara Ibrahim than Hatem el Shamy. If anything, she was more suspicious
of el Shamy than she’d ever been. When Lee found out he’d lose his mind. If she survived whatever this was, he’d probably sack her. There was no way she could keep on paying the Sheikhs if she was on benefits. Mumtaz began to cry. Then she stopped herself. That wouldn’t do any good.

The car turned right and the heavy object at her feet forced her body up against some sort of protuberance. She tried to kick it away with her hobbled feet but it just wouldn’t go.

*

Even if he hadn’t known her registration number, Lee would have recognized Mumtaz’s car. Even old Micras weren’t usually that battle-scarred. He tried the doors but they were all locked. Lights were lit in very few of the buildings on what was a big site. With unmaintained and ill-defined pathways, it was a difficult place to negotiate in the dark, especially if one was wearing platform-soled boots. Shazia went over on her ankle twice. Lee had to swallow old-man comments like ‘I told you not to wear those.’

A building shadowed by a clock tower was helpfully signed ‘Reception’. But it was locked and dark.

‘So what now?’ Shazia said.

Below the sign was a piece of paper. Scrappy and indistinct, Lee peered at it. It said,
In case of Emergency call
… then detailed a mobile phone number. Lee called it. It rang for so long that he thought it must be wrong until somebody said, ‘Yeah?’

Lee explained enough to get the caretaker, who was a disgruntled middle-aged man with a paunch, out from wherever he usually hid and into reception. He claimed to know Mumtaz.

‘Yes, nice lady,’ he said. ‘Her car still in the car park, you say?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, she’s probably on one of the wards then.’

It seemed unlikely, but it could explain why Mumtaz’s phone was off. ‘Can you check?’ Lee asked.

‘Yeah, all right.’

He strolled over to the reception booth and made his calls. Shazia said, ‘Would she still be seeing patients now? She’s only ever seen people in the day when she’s been here before.’

Lee shrugged.

The caretaker returned. ‘Not on none of the wards,’ he said. ‘No one’s seen her.’

‘But her car’s here,’ Shazia said. ‘So she must be here.’

The caretaker shook his head. Then he said, ‘Unless she’s up in one of the offices, but all the lights are off.’

‘Well, can we look anyway?’ Lee asked.

He thought for a moment and then he said, ‘That’s doctors’ offices up there. All sorts of confidential stuff.’

Lee had pegged him as lazy but not as a jobsworth. He said, ‘Listen, we don’t want to look at any files or computers or anything. We just want to see whether Miss Huq is up there.’

‘What, on her own? Alone in the dark?’

‘Yes. Maybe.’ Angry now, Lee said, ‘Listen, mate, for all you or I know she could be being held hostage by a patient in one of them offices.’

He saw Shazia give him a dirty look. He didn’t say anything. It was all very well being politically correct about mental health but there were forensic patients at Ilford and some of them had killed.

‘Come with us,’ Lee said. ‘Make sure we don’t look at anything we shouldn’t.’

The caretaker thought for a moment and then he lit up a fag. ‘All right,’ he said, after the first couple of drags. ‘But if you do anything funny, I know where the alarm buttons are.’

*

‘Are we there yet?’

Not only had Rashida forgotten to bring her Oyster card, she hadn’t taken any money from the house. Walking from Manor Park to posh Aldersbrook wasn’t far, but with a bag on her back and a tired Zizi in her arms it felt like trekking to the Arctic.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Look, can you walk for a bit?’

‘I can …’ But she didn’t look happy about it.

Rashida ignored it. ‘I need you to,’ she said. ‘If you can walk we can be there all the sooner.’

‘Where?’

‘Where we’re going,’ Rashida said. She didn’t want to tell Zizi where they were headed until they got there, just in case their mother should come flying around the corner suddenly, demanding to know what they were doing. She didn’t want to get MJ into trouble.

The little girl walked slowly by Rashida’s side. ‘Are we ever going home again?’ she asked.

There was a way that they could and there was another way that meant they couldn’t. Rashida knew that if she left the door open by not telling Social Services about her upcoming forced marriage, her mother would take her to Egypt and leave her there. Everyone would be happy except Rashida. But MJ’s mum would call Social Services and they might discover that Rashida had been cut. MJ would tell them. She’d been horrified.

‘Who circumcised you?’ she’d asked Rashida when she’d first told her. ‘God, you could prosecute that person!’

Rashida hadn’t told MJ her grandmother and the woman from Aswan had done it. She hadn’t told her she’d almost died either. She’d been so focused on her own problems she’d forgotten that another visit to Egypt probably meant that Zizi was due to be ‘done’. She looked down at the child, who was walking
with difficulty and who looked cold. How could anyone, let alone her own mother, want to hurt her? Both Rashida’s mother and her father had explained it all to her, about how purity was so important in Egyptian society. But Rashida had told them she’d never have sex with anyone outside marriage. They’d said they believed her but that a prospective husband might not. That unless she was cut and sewn up he would always have doubts and that was a bad thing. She’d have to tell Social Services, even if MJ didn’t. For Zizi’s sake. What she wouldn’t tell them about was the lock-up.

MJ’s house was illuminated by lots of white lights. It was the Hindu festival of Diwali some time soon and so that was probably why. In the drive there were three very big posh cars and a little sports car.

‘Is this where we’re going?’ Zizi asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, it’s like Disney World,’ she said.

Rashida pressed the front doorbell, which played a tune of some sort. Then a young Asian man opened the door. This was Krishna, MJ’s brother. ‘Hello?’

‘Hello,’ Rashida said, ‘is MJ in? I’m her friend …’

‘Rashida, yes we’ve met,’ Krishna said. He looked down at Zizi and smiled. ‘And this is …?’

‘My sister, Zizi.’

‘So you finally did the right thing.’ MJ pushed her brother to one side and took Rashida’s hand. ‘Come on.’

Rashida, finally exhausted, cried. ‘Oh, MJ, I didn’t have a choice.’

*

Lee almost missed it. A corner of green material was sticking out from underneath el Masri’s desk. When he looked at it he could
see that it was Mumtaz’s headscarf. Shazia was talking to the caretaker. In spite of his protestations about security, he was being very indiscreet.

‘Egyptian, Dr el Masri,’ Lee heard him say. ‘Money. He drives one of them massive great Mercedes.’

‘My dad used to have one of those,’ Shazia said.

Lee knew that scarf well. He put it in his pocket. There was a ferrous smell in that office that could be blood, but he couldn’t see any.

‘Lives out in one of them new flats down by the Royal Docks,’ the caretaker said. ‘Who wants to live down there?’ He shook his head. ‘Half a million quid to live on top of a load of coke from the old gasworks. Where’s the sense?’

Lee patted his pocket. Just because she’d been in this office didn’t necessarily mean that anything had happened to Mumtaz. But for her to be without her scarf was unusual.

‘Do you know if Dr el Masri’s gone?’ Lee asked.

‘Saw his car go about an hour ago,’ the caretaker said. ‘Maybe your lady friend’s car broke down and so she left it here. I’ve seen her have trouble starting it, especially now it’s cold.’

That had always been an issue with the Micra. But if the car had broken down Mumtaz would’ve told Shazia. Lee hadn’t seen any other evidence of Mumtaz’s presence in the other offices. El Masri had been her main target. If the doctor had gone he needed to find out where. A good start had to be to discover exactly where he lived. But the caretaker wouldn’t go away.

‘I’m gonna have a look in the toilets,’ Lee said. ‘They’re not locked, are they?’

‘No,’ the caretaker said. ‘But if you’re finished in here …’

‘I’m not,’ Lee said. ‘Shazia, can you wait with this gentleman while I go and check the lavvies?’

She looked a bit doubtful for a second but then she caught a look in his eye that told her he really needed her to do this. ‘OK.’

Lee went across the corridor towards the Ladies and then sprinted down the hall to the reception desk. As he’d suspected, all the registration numbers of vehicles allowed to park freely on the site were pinned up on the wall for easy reference. He found el Masri’s, wrote it down on the back of his hand and then ran back to the men’s bogs opposite the chief consultant’s office.

When he got back to el Masri’s office, Shazia was sitting on the doctor’s desk. The caretaker was telling her about the time when a patient on Forensic had held a nurse hostage with a plastic knife. He had subsequently absconded and had got as far as Cornwall. ‘Bloody good effort,’ the caretaker said. ‘He only got caught because some holidaymaker from up here was down there for a few weeks and recognized him from the local rag.’

*

The car stopped and this time so did the engine. Mumtaz heard voices outside, low, almost whispers. She tried not to move. If they opened the boot, should she play dead? She had no idea what might be in store for her but she couldn’t believe that it could be good. Someone had done something that had resulted in blood staining el Masri’s office. She’d been hit over the head. Whoever it was didn’t play nice.